The annual mayor’s luncheon gathered together more than 200 attendees Thursday morning to hear Mayor Alex Nuttall deliver his state-of-the-city address describing the overall economic health of Barrie.
Standing at the podium at Liberty North in the city’s south end, Nuttall touted the city’s accomplishments over the past year, ranging from job creation to housing starts and cost savings, via a slideshow presentation.
While dining on oven-roasted chicken drizzled with fig balsamic vinaigrette served over wild rice, chick peas and carrots, business leaders, politicians and other dignitaries listened to the mayor speak for almost an hour.
Nuttall noted that, over the past two years, the city has accelerated employment project approvals, which he said resulted in new jobs in Barrie, with many emerging in the manufacturing and health sectors.
The mayor described the past year as “very busy,” saying city council has “really focused on the things that we set out to do and accomplish when we were first formed as government … we wanted to be a fiscally responsible council.
“I think that we've been living up to that, we've held the city operations budget at zero for three years straight. We'll be doing that for the fourth year, and so the entire term you’ll see that there are not tax increases that are supporting any city operations. Instead, we’ve been trying to invest in the things that people have talked about for generations, but we haven’t actually had them come to pass.”
City council passed the 2025 operating and capital budget Wednesday night, with a 4.31 per cent overall increase, which includes Barrie police, Simcoe County and Barrie Public Library services.
Nuttall described investments in fixing roads to “big city building items,” such as a performing arts centre, or the Sea Cadets finding a new location, and funding those in a fiscally responsible way.
Chas Hay, owner of HeyBear Productions, took to the microphone and announced that Canadian country music star Dean Brody will be playing a free show at Meridian Place in downtown Barrie on June 14 as part of the downtown summer concert series.
“The beautiful part of it is you’re not even paying for it,” Nuttall said. “This is paid for through the municipal accommodation tax (MAT), which is when every time a hotelier rents a room to someone coming from out of town, there’s a little piece that’s put into the city to be able to fund Tourism Barrie and also to fund these types of things.
“We’re looking towards raising a total of $100,000 towards this; it’s about a $250,000 price tag overall.”
Since April 2024, the City of Barrie has implemented a six per cent MAT on accommodations for a continuous period of less than 30 nights provided by a hotel, motel, inn or internet-based accommodation sharing platform. Tourism Barrie receives 50 per cent of the MAT.